Aygaz Humanoid Robot
To reach university students, Aygaz didn't bring a booth or brochures to Brand Week — it brought a 45 cm humanoid robot you raced with your own body.
AYGAZ · NOVEMBER 2017
Brief
In 2017, Aygaz was looking for sharper ways to bring its brand to university students. For a brand that almost every Turkish household or car comes into contact with — yet that can very easily be filed as "my parents' brand" — Brand Week Istanbul 2017 was a key moment in its push toward campuses. It's the four days of the year when the industry, agencies, press and the creative student crowd are all under the same roof.
The brief was short: among the dozens of booths at Brand Week, build something for university students worth stopping at, queuing for, photographing and sharing. Get out of the standard booth-and-brochure format, but don't do "tech for tech's sake." Turn those four days between the brand and its visitors into something that doesn't say Aygaz is young, kinetic and forward-looking — something that behaves that way.
“The worst way to tell a student about "movement" is a slogan. The best way is to let them actually move something forward with their own body.”
Insight
To hold a university student at a Brand Week booth for more than two minutes, you don't hand them something to watch. You hand them something to step inside. They're tired of fingertip phone games and of experiences that ask them to sit down in front of yet another screen. What stops them is something that pulls their own body into the game — and turns that into a small spectacle they can show off to the friend standing next to them. For a student, body-driven play is social capital: it gets watched, recorded, shared.
Second: what Aygaz really wants to say to a young audience is "movement, energy, progress." Those three words are easy to put on a billboard. They're much harder to make real on a Brand Week show floor. But if the visitor is moving something forward with their own body, those three words stop being a slogan — they turn into a feeling that passes through the visitor's own motor system.
The Idea
Instead of a booth, we built a small arena in the middle of Brand Week. At the head of the arena stood a real 45 cm humanoid robot, designed and built from scratch. In front of it: a physical obstacle course made by our engineers — ramps, narrow passes, turns. Behind and to the side of the robot, a Kinect + webcam body-tracking system; above it, a large prompts screen; on one edge, a leaderboard.
When the player stepped onto the marked spot in the middle of the arena, the run began. Nine different body moves read off the player were mapped to nine different robot moves. Lift your right leg and the robot walks; stretch both arms forward and it bends; open your arms wide and it turns; squat and it lowers — all of it shown live on the big screen as on-screen prompts. The player wasn't triggering something "like a joystick"; they were puppeteering the robot with their own body.
The objective was to clear the course in the shortest possible time. Completion time was measured automatically and posted to the leaderboard under the player's name. The leaders shifted every day; both the worst run and the best run turned into a small show in front of the watching crowd. The day's fastest players walked away with prizes.
Concept, idea, build and technology — from the robot's mechatronics to the body-tracking software, from the obstacle course to the game mechanic — were produced by Harikalar, directly for Aygaz, without an intermediary agency.
A 45 cm Humanoid Robot, Built From Scratch
Not an off-the-shelf Pepper or NAO — a real humanoid robot, designed and built from scratch by our mechatronics engineers specifically for the Aygaz activation. 45 cm tall: close enough to feel like it lives on a kid's desk, big enough that every move was clear to the crowd watching behind each player.
Kinect + Webcam, 9 Body Moves → 9 Robot Moves
When a player stepped onto the marked spot, Kinect and a webcam together tracked the body skeleton in real time. Lifting the right leg made the robot walk; stretching both arms forward made it bend; opening the arms wide made it turn; squatting made it lower — nine separate body moves, each mapped to a different robot motion. No joystick, no tablet, no fingers — only the body.
A Physical Obstacle Course, Engineered
In front of the robot stood not a digital course but a <strong>real, physical</strong> one: ramps, narrow passes, turns. Designed by our engineers around the limit-but-don't-break edge of the small humanoid's mechanics. The tension on stage came not from whether some on-screen avatar would fall, but from whether the actual robot on the desk in front of the player would.
Leaderboard Race + Daily Prizes
Completion times were measured automatically and posted to the leaderboard under each player's name. Leaders shifted every day, the ranking settled in, friend-vs-friend dares grew louder. The fastest players of the day walked away with Aygaz prizes. The motivation that turned a four-minute booth visit into an all-day stay: seeing your own name go up on the board.
Execution
Concept, idea, build and technology were developed end-to-end by Harikalar. Across the four days of Brand Week Istanbul 2017, the humanoid robot, the obstacle course, the body-tracking system, the game software and the leaderboard were all run on-site by the Harikalar field team.
Scope
- Mechatronic design, build and motion programming of the 45 cm humanoid robot
- Kinect + webcam body-tracking software with a 9-body-move → 9-robot-move mapping
- Engineered physical obstacle course design and on-site build
- Large-screen live prompts UI and automatic timed leaderboard
- Four days of live on-site operations on the Brand Week show floor — visitor flow, prize handover
Team
- Director & Experience Design: Atilla Baybara
- Technology & Software: Utku Olcar
- Operations: Yiğit Sarı
- Client Relations: Şaban Yılmaz
- + Mechatronic engineering, 3D / VR production, on-site setup & operations teams
Results
- More than 1,000 plays over 4 days — among the dozens of booths at Brand Week, one of the activations where visitors didn't just stop by, they queued and waited their turn
- Aygaz's "movement" positioning passed through the visitor's own motor system — not a slogan, but a felt experience produced by the player's own body
- Built for university students, but a show that pulled in the whole Brand Week — the small robot's wins and falls became as much a show for the watching crowd as for the player
- One of the early Turkish examples of a brand controlling a custom-built humanoid robot via body tracking — not an off-the-shelf device, but a piece of mechatronics produced for the activation itself
- An activation where concept, idea, build and technology lived in one builder's hands — letting the idea evolve in lockstep with the on-stage build
- Client
- Aygaz
- Brand
- Aygaz
- Year
- 2017
- Location
- Brand Week Istanbul 2017
- Duration
- 4 gün
- Format
- Sıfırdan tasarım humanoid robot + Kinect/webcam vücut takibi + fiziksel engelli parkur + skorboard
- Concept, Production & Operations
- Harikalar
- Project Lead
- Atilla Baybara
- Technology
- Utku Olcar
- Client Relations
- Şaban Yılmaz
- Operations
- Yiğit Sarı
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